MACHINE

MACHINE

sometimes I slip
into a bad
philosophical space

lose it in
my psyche

flirt with
falling off the rails
when it
comes to my own humanity

thinking
   if you other,
you                             alien

no way
   you think, feel like me,
we never
can
   agree

our speech
        never intersect, no
coincidence
      within belief

shame on me
       shame on me

I bleed, I desire, I want
I need

     I fear
and Oh, my God, how
much I fear

and yet as you look
wonder
          what you see

it could well be alien
    I may be just machine

FAIR PROPORTION A

FAIR PROPORTION

they bring the hybrid
to his cell
she needs to talk to him
since species-wise she
has a fair proportion
of his genetic makeup

here she is
for what it’s worth
I agreed to meet her
hard to figure out
exactly what
is human
but one must
presume
it is there

so this is it
this is in me, embodiment
of what I am
capable
   the likeness is
there but everything
about him
seems guarded, hidden
as if he instinctively realizes
all that is terrible in
his capacity
   all that
    can be wrong, go wrong,
and he did terrible wrong

she aaked to talk to him
get answers to questions
she felt she needed
answers to, for her
crucially important

so she could figure out
for herself what is them
what is us

we talk
    She is so insistent in
going over things, knowing details,
minutiae, everything
exactly

I look at him one lsst time
try to see through those eyes
(I do not have human eyes
to me they
      are untrustworthy,
thoroughly upsetting)

I want to tell.him.
he might have, ought to,
have sought forgiveness
for his crimes, these
humsn crimes

senze
    a moment– out of nowhere
of grace
and dignity

so I leave with a wish
that he finds courage and
composure at his execution

having killed so many of
my people, pure and hybrid,

so different and yet
who knows how close
in what is felt inside.

She leaves the cell. We
ask no questions. What
hopes she has, what
reassurance she found
is hers alone. We
should not enquire.













COUPLED

COUPLED

be careful
what you
wish for

imagination
coupled
with
distance

is such
a killer

the creature of
my dreams
was
    so different
strange, alluring
utterly unique and
exotic

sadly
    she is
light years distant
in space
and time

her species across
the galaxy on a
distant
      epic planet

                      however
you do spin it,

her species not having
begun to
truly evolve yet

at least in a direction
I would extremely like

DRAGON

DRAGON

year of the Dragon, sign
of Aquarius

my robot took me out
fishing for nebulae

being a sort-of poet
I will sort-of try to convince
you we did
not return home unlucky

the fish that we caught
though lacking old sci fi fins
pleaded to
          be returned to the cosmos
in pure mathematics

and songs, such sad songs,
that took us through
all the universally audible
and inaudible harmonies

such strange
outlandish scales, she commented
as she and I
calculated what to do
with such a freshly caught
specimen of piscean
intangibility

year of the Dragon, sign
of Aquarius

we added
      a new phenomenon
to our expanding collection

DISAPPEAR

DISAPPEAR

good
better
best

suddenly superlatives
don’t carry
the weight
they used to

I wonder how I,
if I happened to be an
advanced, super-intelligent species
would infiltrate
(have infiltrated)
this sea, water planet
in order to control it

in order to relegate the existing
top dogs
keep then constrained
and monitored
so smartly and with
such sophistication
they do not know
that I am here

running the show, keeping them
so much
none the wiser

good better best
happy happier a whole long list springs to mind

of words to help disappear

HOMEWORLD

HOMEWORLD

a lot of tourists
came to our planet

behaved despicably
threw their weight around
(which in the case
of creatures from gas giants
could be truly immense)

worst of all, as to be expected,
were the various species
of humanoids
and worst of these
were this truly abhorrent
species
       from a planet called Earth

who gave us no choice
but to strike at their Homeworld
and eviscerate their leaders

since it is in the nature of
this species to choose as
their leaders the greediest
and most depraved
and insensible amongst them

without which
we calculated

this species had a future
might have
     some kind of chance

SPIDER WASP (SEQUEL)

SPIDER WASP (SEQUEL)

spider wasp buzzing
the hell out of me

yes, sir, madam
I know your history

how you and that Darwin
bloke
       exploded ET phone home

got us
        alien-inseminated on
LV 426

       scared us out of our wits
and got a knighthood for
Sir Ridley

I’m watching you my little friend

you should watch it too
Sigourney

        terrible if a wasp embryo
should eat its way through
your fine fine chest

don’t climb into the loader might
then think you
                 got eight legs

don’t ever want to give it that idea
since you know
      James Cameron going
to be calling for a sequel

HUMONGOUS

HUMONGOUS

human look
humongous
through
alien eyes

(forget any
cosmic romance
with sweet tentacled
creature)

the bodies we
born with

not
   for light-
speed optimized

what spring and
bounce born with

gravity level-best to
be levelling

so here we be stuck
all can do
     is wave as they pass
us
   any cosmic, astral travellers

then
    best write it off, crazy
to believe

when everything in
our Universe premised
                            on
plausible denial

MORPHOLOGY OF MARTIAN

MORPHOLOGY OF MARTIAN

let us
   invent

an ancient language, lost
for millennia

call it “Martian”
let us
    construct a grammar
divine a morphology

a language that will
refuse to lend itself to
the trite
    and the trivial
bend its form and structure
in the service of evil

like all the languages do
on the planet right now

giving propagandists their
dark joy
  in the fabrication of oppositions
construction
  of hierarchies

building of pyramids and towers
to mask
     diabolical schemes

no let our language
dispense with all gatekeepers

show itself truly generative,
supremely transformational

in its very acts of creation
turning to the galaxy
to glean
     from every language,
every spoken
written tongue

     downtrodden
         and suppressed

GAZEBO

GAZEBO

(the) gazebo
is a portal

can
  whisk you away

transport to mainland,
ancient China

watch the Sengoku Jidai
run its course, take place

alter
  the outcome if
you feel that way

and so no
war with Russia or
Pearl Harbor

no cities devastated
by nuclear fire

unless it is shipping things
across the galaxy at
faster than light speed
tickles
    your fancy

like this insect-like, alien,
shapeshifting creature

          its antennae so switched on
ready to receive

huge, biomechanical possibly,
perhaps even shape-shifting

pushing the boundaries
of what we
        might conceive

here, outlandishly, to
communicate, negotiate,
wing
    its way to our leader
dictate
  surrender terms

or thrust us aeons ahead
as we crack the code
of its impossible technology

or stick you
with its stinger, run off
with genetic evidence

that others, no less curious
than our
    so far limited species

might like to study
    perhaps find

hard
  to believe